Friday, October 2, 2015

One Ancient Secret to Life Balance Made for Today

“GOOD time management remembers the Sabbath
principle. One day a week we must delight in being unnecessary.”

— Dr. Brian Harris

SHAMANS of
ancient Mexico believed that a warrior had the motive and ability to protect
their accessibility — that concealing their presence was a vital skill of a man
(or woman) who could command life. Certainly the Bible calls us, from ancient
times, to this ability in the obedient person to remove themselves from life
for a period of necessary rest: Sabbath — a one-in-seven rhythm.

Yet it is hard
to ‘do’ an actual shalom because we have come to delight too much in being
necessary. We may not even want to be superfluous. And that’s because our
identities are stuck in a place of externality when our real need is an
internality of Jesus.

I talk with a
friend in ministry regularly and we regularly talk about prayer. We pray
together, we pray for each other, and we pray when we’re led. His prayer life
is an inspiration to me. He gets up early most mornings and devotes a few hours
to his quiet time with the Lord. My quiet time is centred on the thoughts God
reveals to me as I write them down. But the centrality of my friend’s prayer
life is simply getting away from distractions and being in himself with God.

God is using my
friend’s application of prayer and quiet time to show me a new thing: stillness
of soul is critical if we’re to become what God destines us to become in
Christ.

Stillness of Soul

How still can we
be? How still of ourselves are we able to be?

Sabbath is an
ancient principle. As ancient as it gets. And so long as time has been we have
had access to this secret from God: stillness of soul is found through a safe
sense of self. But a safe sense of self is found only in Jesus, because deeper
down, where we hurt in guilt and shame, Jesus helps us know that he is what we can never be. He is. What
we can never be. We hunger to be perfect. But we can never be. But, in him, we are his perfection. The Father sees us inhis
perfection.

When we finally
understand and accept this truth, and better is it done to meditate silently
over it, we’re given access to an understanding of ourselves that reconciles us
to ourselves. We no longer need to be perfect. We’re happily broken. We might
laugh at the fact. Then, we have stillness of soul. We no longer need to be
everything to everyone. We happily be nothing to nobody. We are no longer
driven to pillar and post. And from there we’re freshly infused of God and
enthused for life.

Stillness of
soul is the pleasant locale of self that enjoys being him or herself. This is nothing of an ego locale. It’s a
pleasant sense of being where nothing of the forces without have much impact on
the forces within.

A person who is
easily able to be unnecessary in a busily vexatious world will find peace in
being necessary solely to God, for quiet times, within themselves.

A person finding
busyness truly unnecessary finds what is truly necessary in life.